THE NEW YORKER prefer to violate Thailand's prostitu- tion laws. Opponents of the government have a difficult life in Singapore. The State Department report charges that in the universities "tenure and renewal of appointments can be, and have been, refused to academIcs whose work de- viates from government views." It also points to "substantial evidence that the authorities conduct clandestine searches of the baggage of opposition figures in the airport baggage-handling area." Demonstrations, except for those sup- porting the government, almost never occur in Singapore. In fact, except for social gatherings, assemblies of more than five people in public must have police permission. When I interviewed Prime Minister Goh, the government had just announced sharp tuition in- creases for the universities. I asked him why students wouldn't be allowed to unfurl a banner requesting that the increases be scaled back. "If you allow students to do so, then workers will begin to do so over the slightest griev- ance," Goh replied. "And if you have several such demonstrations, right away the impression is created that govern- ment is not in control of the situation- that the place may became unstable. That will have an impact on foreign investors." In the area of human rights, the Bar Association committee sees a design resembling that of the former Marxist governments of Eastern Europe. "A basic strategy of the totalitarian gov- ernments that were recently toppled in Eastern Europe was to keep society atomized, to keep discontent something that can be whispered among friends but that cannot be transformed into a social movement because people are too fearful to join together as a political force," the report says. "This effort to prevent the formation of a civil society has been the principal strategy of the S . " Ingapore government. When I interviewed a member of the political opposition, he called Sin- gapore "a city of fear." There is much evidence to support this characteriza- tion. For instance, in 1990 Russell Heng, who is now a researcher for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, wrote a study on Singapore which was called "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Wealth" and was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. "Two years ago, a Cabinet Minister urged aca- demics and professionals to speak up," he noted in the study. "But when two reporters tried to get the reaction of eighteen of them to the Minister's encouragement, six preferred to keep their views to themselves. Of the re- maining twelve, six spoke only on condition of anonymity." Heng also observed that "talking to people for this essay brought some firsthand experi- ence of the irrational fear which exists even among the best-educated Singa- poreans," and noted, "One example would be those who rejected phone interviews. Yet others spoke in mea- sured tones and then sent word in a roundabout way to say that they would have said things differently if they were not speaking on the phone." I asked a high-ranking Singapore official about this climate of fear. The official seemed to have been anointed the house critic of the Singapore gov- ernment, for he had frequently offered criticisms without repercussion, and in reply to my questions he characterized the attitude of Singaporeans as "Play . f " d I . d " If ' It sa e, an exp aIne, you re not sure, don't do it. This syndrome breeds sycophancy. Our friends point out to us that all critics of government are not treated as generously as I am." But, later, the official in effect confirmed his own observation by asking that his name not be used in the article. I saw several examples of the per- vasive fear in my month in Singapore. On two occasions, when I met oppo- nents of the government at hotels for lunch they pointed to people in the lobby and said they were agents of the I.S.D. who were watching us. (I doubted it, figuring that the Singapore government was too competent to al- low its security agents to be detected so easily.) Another time, I interviewed an American in the publishing busi- ness in Singapore. He later called back, apologizing profusely, to say that he was about to buy an apartment, but first he wanted to know if I was planning to quote him as saying any- thing critical, because he feared that any such remark would result in his expulsion from the country. And one h 'f>.f /" '" <1< ."'- , " "" &i /," , , , , -r;: s 57 day, when I beeped my answering machine in Berkeley from my Singapore hotel room, I found a message giving me a phone number in Singapore to call. "Don't identify yourself in any way," the message said. "Just make an appointment to have lunch." I fol- lowed the instructions, and found myself meeting an establishment journalist. All during lunch, as this journalist described repression in Singapore, he kept glancing nervously over his shoul- der, as if he thought he was about to be snatched away. "I never ask ques- tions at press conferences, because if you do they take note of you," he told me. "A number of journalists have lost their jobs." This man held such a negative view of Lee Kuan Yew that he predicted, "There will be a N uremberg trial in Singapore if Lee loses power-I'm absolutely convinced of it. I see him in no different position from the Shah of Iran or Marcos. Each and every 'CommunIst' he has detained is not a Communist but an effective political opponent." The climate of intimidation in Sin- gapore was fuelled by a series of events that began in 1987, when the govern- ment initiated a crackdown that even- tually included actions against Catho- lic church workers, a prominent attorney who had been Solicitor General of Singapore, and a diplomat at the American Embassy, who was sum- marily expelled from the country. These actions seemed to Westerners, at least, to make little sense, because they came at a time when the government ap- peared to be under no threat whatso- ever, from either domestic or foreign opponents; few people could imagine that the political opposition would win more than four or five of the eighty- one seats in Parliament in the Septem- ber, 1988, elections, since it then held only two seats. The crackdown began in May and June of 1987, when the government arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act twenty-two young social activists, several of them Catholic lay workers. The alleged local ringleader was Vincent Cheng, a former seminarian who had been involved in church-related activities for more than a decade; at the time of his detention, Cheng was helping Filipino women who had been brought to Singapore as maids and then mistreated. The gov- ernment contended that the twenty- two were part of a "Marxist conspiracy to subvert the existing social and po-